Becoming an Employer of Choice Part 1:
CULTURE MARKETING

Unlike the past few years, many HR experts are predicting a labor shortage in the coming months. This means the battle for highly talented personnel will be heating up. So what can you do to make sure you don't miss out on the top employees for your company? It involves becoming an "Employer of Choice."

I wanted to provide a few strategies that you can immediately deploy to help you attract, hire and retain the right people for your organization. This is the first article in a three part series focusing on simple strategies that you can use to help your organization become a great place to work.

The three part series will focus on:

Culture Marketing™:
The process of identifying the unique attributes that make your organization a great place to work and packaging these in an intriguing and appealing message.

Hire Smart:
The art of identifying the skills, knowledge, personality, cultural fit and behavioral requirements needed for your team and implementing a strategy to hire the candidates with such characteristics.

Retain The Best:
The practice of developing and effectively implementing programs that continue to retain, motivate and develop your best team members.

Part One: Culture Marketing™:
All organizations have product marketing strategies with the objective of creating demand in the market through creative messages about the unique attributes of their products. However, with the changing and competitive job market beginning to heat up, organizations will soon need to consider developing marketing campaigns to attract talent. I have coined this effort Culture Marketing which is the process of identifying the unique attributes that make an organization a great place to work and packaging these in an intriguing and appealing message.

What makes a company a great place to work? Is your company a great place to work? If so, how would you bottle those unique traits and package them in a creative marketing message?

Job seekers are interested in finding an organization that offers a unique culture, professional and personal development opportunities as well as an opportunity to make a difference.

Step 1: The first step in identifying what makes your company unique is to ask your best employees.
Why do they like to work at XYZ Company?

Listed below are some questions that you should consider asking your employees.

• What do you like about our culture?
• Do you like the size ofour organization?
• Do you feel that we are a team oriented organization or individually focused?
• Do you feel like our culture is cooperative or a competitive environment?
• Do you feel that we foster a customer focused environment?
• Do you feel that we conduct ourselves in an ethical and honest way throughout our personal and professional life?
• Do you feel that we offer a flexible work environment?
• Do you feel that the company/team lives the values of the organization?
• How does the company view people at the company?
• Do you feel like you have opportunities for career growth?
• How does the organization view community / family?

Once you have identified the unique traits of your company that attracted and continue to retain your best employees, ask the employees to rank the most important and most unique traits of the company's culture.

Step 2: What makes your best, the best?
As you work with your team, begin to develop a list of personality and behavioral traits that are common among your best employees.
Are your best employees…

• Team players or individual performers?
• Focused on professional development?
• Functionally or technically skilled?
• Maintaining an optimistic attitude?
• Enthusiastic and energetic?
• Focused on customer satisfaction?

These are just a few traits that you should consider. The purpose of Step 2, is to understand the type of people that have been attracted to your company. You can use this information to begin targeting candidates who have similar personalities and behavioral traits. Now that you have asked what makes XYZ Company a great place to work and you have identified the traits that make your best, the best, it is time for Step 3.

Step 3: Attracting the right people to the organization.
Based on my research, job seekers look for the following attributes when researching potential employers.

• Financial Security and Stability
• Entrepreneurial Inspiration
• Strong Leadership
• Professional Education
• Career growth opportunities
• Work-life balance
• Flexibility
• Healthy and social environment
• Collaboration and teamwork
• Competence of peers
• Equipment and productivity tools
• Reward and recognition system
• Standard market benefits
• Opportunity to contribute
• Solid company communication
• Organizational stability

As you complete step one and two, consider your findings and begin to build your product/cultural marketing message. A brief example is provided in Exhibit 1. You should view the culture of the organization and culture of your team as your most important product that the company has to sell when striving to become an employer of choice. Why would someone want to join your company? What would make someone want to learn more about your organization? This is the critical aspect of attracting the right people for your job.

As with product advertisements, your cultural marketing message should begin to grow into your employment brand. This brand needs to be consistently leveraged in job postings, advertisements as well as in the message that your hiring manager's use when interviewing potential employees.

By developing a strong cultural marketing message and employment brand, your company will begin to cultivate a common theme about your culture which will encourage your current employees to evangelize the benefits of working at XYZ Company. This strategy will help build a positive reputation in the job market which will energize the best potential candidates to research and apply for jobs for your team and company.

Exhibit 1:

XYZ remains the best place to work by…
Fostering an inclusive and associate-centered culture. Providing meaningful and challenging work. Developing people to realize their potential. Creating opportunity for growth and development. Recognizing contributions and rewarding achievement. Offering frequent, open and two-way communications. Providing economic opportunity through exceptional benefits packages to full-time and part-time associates.

AT XYZ Company we maintain…
A highly skilled, high integrity, motivated and aligned global workforce at all levels of the organization. A team that reflects the diversity of the communities we serve. A team that fosters innovative practices and solutions, one that's not afraid to try new ideas. A team that is rewarded for its ongoing training and self-development and for its collaborative working relationships. A well-compensated team that feels safe coming to work and motivated to perform beyond expectations each and every day. A team of people dedicated and passionate about its work.